On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:16:03 +0100 David Woodhouse wrote: > On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 19:07 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > Do a "make menuconfig" and look at the number of options. > > Why would I do that? I haven't done that for _years_. I've just edited > the .config file, removed the line which turns some option on or off, > then run 'make oldconfig'. I get asked about the option in question, and > then if I've turned something on I get asked about other options which > depend on it and which are now possible but weren't before. How do you do that if you have all of ISDN disabled and want/need to enable one ISDN driver? or same problem for V4L(2)/dvb? or several other subsystems? (e.g. sound) > Increasingly, these days, that approach has been failing due to all this > Aunt Tillie crap. I tried turning off CONFIG_KALLSYMS the other day, but > it took me a while to work out how. And the increasing use of 'select' > is even worse. > > > There's e.g. no reason to ask all users whether they want to compile all > > I/O schedulers into their kernel. > > > > To avoid misunderstandings: > > > > I'm not talking about people subscribed to this list. > > > > It's more about a system administrator who must for some reason (e.g. > > hardware support or the requirement of some external patch) compile his > > own kernel. > > Why on earth would they create a config file from scratch instead of > using a defconfig or the config from their distribution and modifying it > so suit their needs? > > For most things, they ought to be able to just build extra modules to > _match_ their distribution's kernel, without having to rebuild the > kernel itself. (Although people doing stupid things in the kernel like > #ifdef CONFIG_foo_MODULE tends to screw them sometimes -- I can't build > IPv6 for my Nokia 770 without replacing its kernel, for example). > > People just don't have that much cause to create configs from scratch -- > there's little benefit in pandering to those who are less able. Make the > _defaults_ sane, by all means -- but don't just start hiding options. > > However you dress it up, it's still ESR's Aunt Tillie come to haunt us. > And it's a PITA. --- ~Randy - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
